


Pillows and Other Matters of the Heart

by Misty_Floros



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Asexual Relationship, Drunkenness, F/F, Fluff and Humor, Hugs, Post-Canon, She/Her Pronouns for Aziraphale (Good Omens), She/Her Pronouns for Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:00:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25199656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misty_Floros/pseuds/Misty_Floros
Summary: She would say, “A lot of human friends hug, you know? It’s a normal thing between them. So I’ve been wondering, given how long we’ve known each other, isn’t it strange that we don’t hug at all?”And Aziraphale would reply something along the lines of, “We aren’t human, Crowley, though, are we?” or “Of course it’s different with us. We're an angel and a demon.” or worse, “Are we, though? Friends?”It turned out one night she needn’t have been so worried.or: Crowley purchases a pillow.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	Pillows and Other Matters of the Heart

The problem with retirement was that you suddenly had time to think about a lot of things.

Crowley wished she could say her own behaviour appalled her, but it didn’t. She was just happy about having bought the fluffy pillow, and was looking forward to the evening when she would put it to use.

Apparently, it had been designed to prevent people from messing up their spine when they slept on their side. Crowley had the habit of doing so whenever she wasn’t lounging around on the ceiling or hanging upside down in a closet or on curtains. (Crowley might not be a vampire, but humans had a habit of mistaking her for one, and she did sport a nice pair of fangs from time to time. She had every right to act a bit vampirey when the fancy took her.)

She certainly could use an orthopaedic aid like that, since she had trouble convincing her vertebrae to construct a healthy human curvature at times. That said, there had been much progress on that front, seeing as a few centuries ago, she wouldn’t even have got the number right. Nowadays, she sometimes did wake up with a redundant lumbar vertebra, but that wasn’t anything a quick miracle couldn’t fix.

Correcting her posture, she reasoned, was a matter of energy management. If her body did the things it was supposed to do on its own, she could spare some of the continuous hum of maintenance miracles.

As a bonus, the tag clipped on the pillowcase proclaimed the object had been crafted with love, so she’d felt obligated to buy it and thus support the supreme evil that was the monetisation of affection.

She’d of course bought the blasted pillow for the sole reason of having something to hug, and she’d been looking forward to it all day.

Its case was plain white, which she thought wasn’t a problem – it definitely seemed better than pillowcases with pictures of people printed on them; she might be a bit lonely and a smidgen pathetic, but the whole world didn’t have to know – until she hauled it into her bedroom and realised it happened to be the only light-coloured thing in a sea of black. Some insinuations hid behind that, so she promptly miracled the case to match the rest of the bedcovers.

The problem with retirement was that you had heaps of time to spend observing. Observing, noticing, comparing and dwelling on. Which led to things like body pillows.

It had been a nice day a few months after the scheduled Armageddon, and she’d been walking to the garden centre when a bus had pulled up to the curb next to her. A pre-teen in a baseball cap bounced out of the vehicle and ran towards another child, who had been waiting at the bus shelter, and they hugged tightly. When Crowley passed by them, they still hadn’t let go of each other. A smile weaved its way onto her face, and she promptly scowled to make up for it.

In the evening, she saw two old men embrace in goodbye before parting ways, and that was when her brain decided it was about the right time to start fixating on it.

So Crowley fixated – people greeting each other, people bidding farewell to each other, people comforting one another, sharing love, sharing joy, people simply seeking solace in another’s physical presence. They hugged their partners and their family, and they also hugged their friends. Of course they did. Good for them. Crowley didn’t have a partner or what you would call family, but she had a friend. And they didn’t hug.

Her mind compared and dwelled and dwelled and dwelled. She told it to fuck off, and it threatened to actually do so; she told it to shut up instead. It refused.

Now she had a soft inanimate object to cuddle, however, and it would be all right.

She slept for a week, and all the while she clutched the piece of fabric stuffed with fluff from the seeds of some sort of tree, as far as she remembered the home décor employee telling her.

And it was fine. Her sudden hugging needs seemed to be appeased. She wouldn’t need to bring it up with Aziraphale. She imagined the conversation going like this:

She would say, “A lot of human friends hug, you know? It’s a normal thing between them. So I’ve been wondering, given how long we’ve known each other, isn’t it strange that we don’t hug at all?”

And Aziraphale would reply something along the lines of, “We aren’t human, Crowley, though, are we?” or “Of course it’s different with us. We're an angel and a demon.” or worse, “Are we, though? Friends?”

It turned out one night she needn’t have been so worried.

They were standing on Crowley’s balcony, each with a glass of red wine in their hand. Crowley was holding hers like a brandy snifter. Aziraphale was looking down into the rectangular courtyard enclosed by blocks of flats, at its lawn reminiscent of a golf course and at the fountain which had been turned off at dusk. Crowley had her elbows propped on the railing and was contemplating the overgrown yuccas and fan palms on the topmost balcony of the opposite building. She felt pleasantly sloshed.

“I was thinking,” Aziraphale was saying, “we should go somewhere. To the countryside, I mean. Away from…” she gestured ambiguously. “You know what I’m saying? Lots of people, cars and shops and everything. Not that I don’t like people, but…”

“I get it. It can be really overw– overly–,” Crowley frowned and made an all-encompassing gesture. “I get it. I do.”

“You’d go with me, right?”

The demon nodded. “Yeah. We’d go together. To Spain, like proper grandmas.”

“Why Spain?”

“A lot of old people go there. You know, from the north of Europe n’ England n’ Germany. Because they’re sun-depraved. Deprived. They call them something colourful there, in Spain.”

Aziraphale was still staring at the switched-off fountain.

Crowley racked her brains. “Starts with a G. Gyros.”

“That’s a Greek dish. Gyros because it gyra– gytar–” Aziraphale paused and took a deep breath before slowly enunciating, “gyrates. But the Greeks don’t say it that way. They say,” she furrowed her eyebrows, “yee...”

“Yee?”

“Yearos. Yer-aws? Yee-rohs.”

Crowley shrugged. “Still could mean something else in Spanish.”

“’S not Spanish. I know Spanish.”

“Could be Portuguese.”

Aziraphale bent down to pick up the bottle and started refilling her glass. Crowley let her eyes settle on the lines creasing Aziraphale’s soft face, on the scrunched up forehead and the focused expression in her eyes.

Aziraphale caught her looking and gave her a smile. She staggered closer to Crowley, making their shoulders touch.

“We can go to Portugal if you want,” she slurred, rubbing her eyes. “I’ve talked to a book collector from there recently. He said I should visit the national park they’ve got there, whassit called? Ge– Gerês? Gerês, I think.”

“National park Gyros,” Crowley mused. “’S probably Portuguese after all.”

“Do you remember that earthquake in Lisbon? Eighteenth century. Seventeen fifty-something.”

“Oh, I remember that all right. Wrath of God. I mean,” she flailed the arm not holding a glass about, “you’ve been a believer all your life, and then a, a frescoed vault’s falling on your face on a holy day and you think, huh, maybe… maybe God’s a bit of a dick after all. And poof,” she snapped her fingers, “to Hell with you.”

Aziraphale grumbled incoherently, clearly not keen on theological discussions in her inebriated state. She patted Crowley’s shoulder consolingly.

“As if She didn’t create evil Herself,” Crowley muttered and drained her glass. She stared into it moodily, observing how it caught glints of the gibbous Moon which had risen above the rooftops. She turned her head to the poorly visible stars in a sudden bout of melancholy and waited for her vision to stop swimming.

Aziraphale laid her head on Crowley’s shoulder.

“You’re so dark and tragic, Crowley dear,” she said, turning her head so that her forehead rested against Crowley’s collarbone.

“Dark and tragic. That’s me.”

“And sad.”

“You’re drunk, Aziraphale,” Crowley informed her drunkenly, carefully enunciating the syllables composing her name.

“Mhm. I jus’ want to give you a big hug.”

Crowley made a surprised noise. “Really?”

”Mhm.” Aziraphale lifted her head from Crowley’s collarbone and instead draped her arms around her torso without further ado.

Crowley wound her arms around the angel’s plump form. She felt wetness on her back, and it took her a minute to figure out Aziraphale hadn’t put down her nearly full glass and was in the process of spilling wine on the back of her shirt.

“I bought a pillow,” she informed Aziraphale at length.

“A pillow?”

“For hugging. But this is better.”

“You can hug me instead of a pillow,” Aziraphale said, her tone uncomprehending, as if she thought the idea of hugging a pillow to be very strange.

“You’ll be my pillow?”

The angel confirmed, “I’ll be your pillow.”

“Could be a song,” Crowley muttered.

“Let’s go to sleep,” Aziraphale said. “’S no good for pillows to be upright.”

Crowley made a noise of assent.

They drew apart and, after leaving bottles and glasses on the balcony’s tiles, staggered inside the flat. Crowley wobbled in meanders towards the bedroom, Aziraphale following her. They plopped down onto the bed next to each other.

“Ugh,” Crowley told the spinning room.

Aziraphale rolled over and flung her limbs over Crowley like a particularly heavy and cuddly pillow.

“The cuddliest,” Aziraphale mumbled, making Crowley realise she might have said that aloud. Sticking her face in the crook of the demon’s neck, Aziraphale responded, “You did.”

They lay quietly in the dark, and Crowley started to drift off. Aziraphale hiccupped, the jolt transmitting to Crowley’s body as well.

“Bugger,” the angel said and hiccupped again. “We should sober up.”

Crowley forced her eyes open. “Right. Good idea.”

On the balcony, bottles started refilling themselves. Unfortunately, they had left one of them lying down, and now the wine dripped down onto the horribly cropped lawn below.

Alcohol left Crowley’s system, and she blinked at Aziraphale, who was holding her somewhat stiffly now that the booze wasn’t here to lower her inhibitions.

“Sorry,” Crowley said sluggishly and inched away.

“Do you still feel like sleeping?” Aziraphale asked, not moving from her position even after Crowley slipped from her grasp.

“Yeah,” Crowley replied, shutting her eyes once more.

“Well then, come back here, dear.” Aziraphale patted the mattress with her hand.

Crowley reopened one eye and peered at her. “Right.”

She shuffled back awkwardly and Aziraphale slung one arm over her chest once again. She smiled up at Crowley before tucking her head into her neck. Crowley held her close with one arm around her back. After a few minutes, they fell asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> \- The word Crowley can't remember is guiri, the Spanish slur for tourists especially from northern parts of Europe.  
> \- [The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/november-1-1755-the-earthquake-of-lisbon-wraith-of-god-or-natural-disaster/)  
> 


End file.
